Fic: "Happy Days Are Here Again"
OK, I said another au_bingo story was on the way, and here it is. The prompt: "Historical: 1920s."
Read on if you dare!
"Happy Days Are Here Again"
In no other place in America was Prohibition more blatantly flaunted than in Chicago. In no place in Chicago could you get a harder drink, hotter jazz or a better time than you could in a speakeasy owned by gangster - ahem - “prominent businessman” Bradford Meade. And no speakeasy owned by Bradford Meade was more profitable, or dangerous, than Mode.
“Why dangerous?” said Daniel Meade, the younger son of the family. “You said we were protected on the north side.”
Bradford grimaced. “Don’t you read the papers, son?”
“I thought we bought all the papers off.”
“Only to cover what happened to your brother.” Daniel winced to think of Alex, missing and no doubt dead for almost a year now. Had he been rubbed out by Al Capone? Bugs Moran? No telling. Nobody had taken credit, and they’d never found a body. Even as the old grief welled up, though, his father was moving on. “Besides, even we don’t have enough cash to cover up the St. Valentine’s Day massacre.”
“Oh. Of course,” Daniel said. “I saw a newsreel.”
“Saw a newsreel. Thank God for your crush on Gloria Swanson; otherwise you wouldn’t have a damned clue, would you?” Bradford glared at him over his glass of gin. His father’s pinstriped three-piece suit would have looked at home on a London banker. The opulence of their mansion on Chicago’s Gold Coast would have suited the court of an Ottoman sultan. “It was your mother’s big idea to send you back east to the Ivy League. Said we needed one legitimate member of the family. It was fine with me when we had Alex. But now we need you to step up to the plate, and - you’re soft, son.”
“I’m learning. I won’t let you down, Dad. I promise.”
Did that sound as pitiful to his father as it did to him? In truth, Daniel hadn’t understood the true nature of his family’s wealth and power until very late in the game - really not until after he’d gone to college. There, it had been easy enough to pretend that he’d never have to deal with it. If he could get decent grades, he could get some worthy, respectable job that wouldn’t ask him to work too hard: a place in a large law firm that valued prestige above initiative in its young partners, or perhaps a government sinecure. Daniel never consciously thought about the “not working too hard” bit, but it figured into all his calculations.
But now Alex was gone. And Daniel - who scooped spiders up on newspaper to put them on the windowsill - was being groomed to take over a massive criminal enterprise that involved bootlegging and murder. He didn’t think it was going to go very well. Still, he had to try.
Bradford Meade pointed to the map of Chicago pinned up on the wall, which had areas marked in pencil: Moran. Capone. Meade. He pointed to one of the Moran-Meade boundary lines. “Capone’s got Bugs Moran running scared. Moran’s going to strike back at all of us, to prove he’s still powerful. And Mode’s right on the edge of his territory.”
“You think he’d hit a speakeasy?” It was one thing to attack each other’s henchmen and headquarters, another to go after civilians. Even Daniel understood that the deaths of non-criminals would ignite harsh response from the police. Sure, they’d paid off the cops - but to ignore alcohol sales, not mass slaughter of the public.
“I doubt it. That’s not what this is about. You’re my son. You’re a symbol that I’m not about to give an inch.”
Daniel also thought he was very likely to be a target, but surely his dad wouldn’t put him out there without some protections. “I’ll be, ah, covered?”
“Sure, sure,” his father said, more casually than the occasion seemed to call for. “We'll give you a bodyguard. You just go in. You’re technically not the boss, see? You’re just observing. But you find out how this business runs, starting from one speakeasy. Once you’ve got that down, you can really get started.”
“Great.” Daniel felt like he might vomit. At least, at a speakeasy, he’d be able to get a drink if he needed one. He already felt like he would need several. “Wait … what do you mean, I’m technically not the boss?”
“Technically, I don’t own any of the speakeasies. That way, if there’s ever a bust, I won’t be the one to take the fall. It’ll be one of the poor saps who signed the deed and knows he’d better turn all the profits over to me or else.”
“So who is that, at Mode?”
With an elegant shrug, Bradford said, “Some Mexican family with immigration trouble.”
**
“Relax, would you?” said his bodyguard - a tough-talking Australian named Connor Owens - as they walked along the alleyway. “I’ve got you covered.”
“I’ll feel better after we’re inside the club,” Daniel said.
“What, do you expect to stay in there for the next few years?” Connor laughed. Although it was obviously a joke, Daniel thought it didn’t sound like a bad idea. Maybe the speakeasy had room in back for a cot.
The door looked like it might lead into a back storeroom, perhaps - shabby, with strips of black paint hanging from it. Daniel rapped three times, as he’d been told, and the window in the door slid open. Dark eyes blinked up at him, and he heard the question, “Got any bananas?”
“Now you’re selling me banana oil,” Daniel answered, again, as coached.
The door swung open to reveal … a teenage kid with tan skin and doe eyes, who grinned up at them like a born showman. As the jazz music and cigarette smoke filled the space around Daniel, the kid said, “Welcome to Mode.”
He stared at the spectacle in front of them - Connor Owens clearly as blown away as Daniel himself - and said the only thing he could muster: “Wow.”
Almost two hundred people, black and white, crowded around small round tables, in air thick with the haze of cigarette smoke. Deep red paint gleamed almost wetly on the walls. A jazz band was banging out a beat so tantalizing that Daniel wished he had come to dance, and indeed several couples were going wild on the dance floor, the women’s fringe dresses flapping in rhythm. He loved it when their dresses did that. As the bass drum picked up the tempo, Daniel realized that his dad hadn’t been putting him on: This probably was the very hottest club in all of Chicago. Maybe in the whole US of A.
The teenage kid said, “Ten cents for coat check, three drink minimum. And make sure you hang out for the singer’s set. She’s fabulous.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be someplace where they’re serving alcohol?” Daniel asked.
Instead of being dismayed, the kid just shrugged. “Hello, Prohibition? We’re all illegal here. Just remember that.”
“Couldn’t forget it.” He put his hand out. “I’m Daniel Meade.”
“Oh. Oh.” That got to the kid, which should’ve been a good thing. Instead it made Daniel feel weirdly lonely, the way the boy became all serious and stopped sassing him. “Justin Suarez. My grandfather runs this place for, uh, your dad. Which you know. Because you’re here. Um - for you, coat check is free?”
“Thanks, Justin.” He gave the boy a smile he hoped was reassuring as they turned away. It had to take a lot out of a kid to work late nights in a speakeasy. As someone else shanghaied into his family’s business without much of a vote, he could sympathize.
The coat check girl leaned halfway over her counter, revealing a whole lot of cleavage and fashionably bobbed blonde hair. “Hey,” she said, one hand at her hip. “I’m Amanda, and I really want to take care of you.”
“You mean, take our coats,” Daniel said.
She grinned wider. “That too.”
Connor sighed heavily as he handed over his coat, though he kept his fedora on. Apparently he didn’t go for fast girls. Daniel, who did, smiled back as he handed his over with his hat, but he tried to keep his mind on what he was doing … at least for now. He could look up that sassy coat-check girl later.
They stepped from the foyer into the club proper. Along the left wall, Daniel saw what he’d most been seeking: the bar. For the first time, Connor’s stern face shifted into a rogueish grin. “Thank God,” he said, his Australian accent thicker than usual. “I’m sick to tears of bathtub gin.”
“You and me both.” Daniel led them to the bartender, a slim young man with curly, coiffed hair. “Two Manhattans?”
“Vermouth, vermouth, vermouth,” sighed the bartender. “Couldn’t you be a bit original? God, what I wouldn’t give for an interesting cocktail order. Crème de cassis, anyone?”
“Here’s something original for you.” Connor pointed his thumb sideways, toward Daniel. “His pop’s Bradford Meade, so how about you pour the man what he wants?”
Great - now his hired muscle was threatening the staff. That couldn’t be the best way for him to get started here, could it? Then again, it was what Dad would do.
The bartender suddenly brightened into a too-cheery smile. “Well, hello there! I’m Marc, and there’s nothing I love more than pouring Manhattans. Unless it’s being the dresser for Minnie.”
“Minnie?” Daniel tried to figure out if that was some gangster he ought to know.
Marc gave him a shocked look. “The Wilhelmina Slater, the hottest jazz chanteuse in the city of Chicago? The star that made Mode what it is today? I help pick out her dresses and jewelry, do her hair, things like that. In return she doesn’t hurt me.” He sounded thrilled just to be abused by this woman. “Her next set is just about to start!”
“Hey, Marc.” An attractive woman a few years older than Daniel came walking up, cigarette case slung around her neck to rest against her hips. This was the cigarette girl, then - one who walked around all night selling cigarettes and matches, while incidentally wearing a tight-fitting dress cut low in front and high on her fishnet-stockinged legs. Despite her petite frame and bobbed black hair, he looked like she could easily handle any guy who tried to get his hands on anything besides the cigarettes. “Can you get some more of those red matchbooks? For some crazy reason, everybody wants red tonight.”
“Sure thing, Hilda.” Marc handed her a packet of the matchbooks, pointedly looking at Daniel. “Did you meet Bradford Meade's son, by the way?”
“Oh, my God.” Hilda stared for a second before giving him a big grin, though there was nervousness behind it. Was this the way his father saw the world - forever afraid of him? Daniel didn’t know how he could stand it. “You must’ve met my Justin. He’s a good boy, don’t worry. He can handle the door.”
“Can’t believe you’re old enough to have a kid that age,” Connor said.
Clearly flattered, Hilda smoothed her hair. “Got started early.” Daniel couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Was her husband dead, or was she one of those divorcees, or - more shocking than any other possibility - had she never been married at all? He told himself to get over it; the people he met at Mode were going to be different than Chicago’s high society or the families he’d met through his friends at Harvard. Rougher. Earthier. But - it seemed to him - a lot more exciting.
Daniel had done as much tomcatting around at college as any other guy - considerably more than most, really. He’d been popular, though he’d always wondered, down deep, if that was because he could always provide bootleg booze for parties. He’d squired around Radcliffe students and even fooled around with some actresses in New York. But that was all pretty ordinary stuff, even if he indulged more frequently. Life at Mode - that could get wild.
Just as he was contemplating the hedonistic possibilities, the house lights lowered and the band began providing a drum roll. Marc clapped his hands together excitedly under his chin. “It’s time!”
The bandleader called out, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mode is proud to present the one, the only - Minnie Slater!”
Marc leaped up to hit a switch on the wall, which made an enormous spotlight illuminate the stage just as the singer stepped out. Minnie wore a white sequined gown that contrasted with her brown skin, and jewels that had to be paste but glittered like real. As the applause began to fade, she started singing in a perfect, honeyed voice:
“So long, sad times
Go along, bad times!
We are rid of you at last -
Howdy, gay times
Cloudy gray times
You’re now a thing of the past - because - ”
Daniel knew the song, of course. Everybody in the United States knew that song by now. But Minnie didn’t sing it all happy and chirpy the way most jazz bands played it. Instead, it was slow and sweet - almost sad - like those bad times weren’t quite over yet. That made the song more beautiful in the strangest way, Daniel thought, as she swept into the chorus:
“Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Let’s sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again - ”
He turned to Connor to say, She’s really something, huh? but the words never left Daniel’s mouth. Because Connor wasn’t just listening to Minnie - he was staring, slack-jawed, with an expression that was equal parts desire and wonder. For the first time, Daniel thought, he really understood what the word “lovestruck” really meant.
Hopefully it wouldn’t distract Connor from his bodyguard duties. Daniel liked the part where somebody was interested in keeping him alive.
Then, at his shoulder, Daniel heard a woman’s voice say, “So, you’re Daniel Meade?”
He turned his head to the side. He saw nothing. And then he looked down.
She wore a dowdy mustard-colored suit that looked more like something from 1919 than 1929, and her hair pulled back into a schoolmarm bun. Those round spectacles weren’t doing her any favors, either - but the frown on her face capped things off.
“Yeah, I’m Daniel,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Betty Suarez. I run this place for my father, since he got sick.” She put her hands on her hips. “And you’re got a lot of nerve showing up here.”
“Betty!” Hilda whispered, waving her hands. “This guy is our boss! You gotta be polite! At least to his face.” Marc clutched a seltzer bottle to his chest, like he was considering spraying Betty down to cool her off.
Connor glared at them all. “Can’t you be quiet while the lady’s trying to sing?”
Daniel took Betty by the elbow and guided her away from the bar deeper into the club - then realized he wasn’t really sure where else to go. Betty made a harrumphing sound as she took over the steering, half pushing him into a back room. As soon as the door shut behind them, she said, “How can you come down on us like this?”
“I’m not coming down -”
“I expected that we’d hear about it. That not all the reaction would be positive.” She pushed her glasses further up her nose as her words peppered him like bullets from a tommy gun. “But having you show up here to take control of the nightclub just because I decided we should integrate it is really ridiculous. Social justice -”
“Wait, wait. Give me a second, all right?” Daniel tried to process what she’d just said. “It’s fine that you integrated the club.”
Betty blinked, owlish behind those funny glasses. “It is?”
“Yeah.” Daniel had never considered himself a radical in this area, nor any other, as being a radical seemed to involve a lot of reading. But to him this seemed like nothing more than simple good sense. “I mean, these days, we could all use a drink, right?”
“Right. Exactly. Thank you.” Betty studied him, more curious than hostile now. “So, if your father isn’t angry about my integrating the club, why did he send you here? What did I do wrong?”
Daniel sighed. “You’ve got it upside down. I’m the one who’s wrong - the one who doesn’t know anything about, uh, the family business, let’s call it. He thinks I could learn a lot here - from you, I guess. So you’re doing everything right.”
Another aspect of his father’s decision process had already occurred to Daniel, but he wasn’t about to mention it. Dad liked to scold him for spending too much time and attention on his ladyfriends - romance was, to Bradford Meade, nothing but a distraction. Betty Suarez didn’t look very distracting. Cute in a sort of enraged-owl way, but not Daniel’s type by a long shot. His father must have assumed that, here at Mode, he’d be able to focus.
“I’m supposed to be teaching you how to run a speakeasy?” Betty folded her arms. “So now I have two jobs.”
She didn’t show much deference to someone who was supposed to be her boss - but Daniel realized he kind of liked that. After watching Connor intimidate Marc and Hilda, and seeing how Justin’s smile had changed from something natural to something fake upon hearing Daniel’s name, he found it refreshing to talk to someone who wasn’t going to cut him much slack or put him down. “Look at it this way. You’re making sure a thirsty nation stays … lubricated.”
Her mouth quirked in an unwilling smile, and for the first time, he noticed that she had very full lips. “Well, we might as well get started.”
**
More than two hours later, they sat in the back office, which smelled comfortably musty and was filled with little goofy knick-knacks that Betty apparently thought were cute. Daniel had rolled up his shirt sleeves, and Betty had set aside her jacket. A few tendrils of hair had escaped from her bun. “So, ‘nuts’ is our code word for hard liquor, and ‘bolts’ is the code for wine and beer. We use ‘hard bolts’ for wine, ‘rounded bolts’ for beer, but there's not much need to split them up, because we have the same suppliers.”
“Won’t the tax guys notice that we don’t bring in the same number of nuts and bolts? You know, they usually go together.”
“Usually we bribe the tax guys. We’re not going for accuracy here. Just something plausible. Something they could say they believed, if someone else asked.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes with one hand; the little numbers in the narrow columns were starting to swim before his eyes. In the distant background, he could hear Minnie Slater’s latest set and the raucous approval of the crowd. Quite a party was going on just feet away, but he’d never been farther from it.
He glanced at Betty and wondered if she’d ever gotten to hear a whole show. Or to drink a glass of the champagne. Whether any guy had ever asked her to dance. She seemed like she could use a little dancing in her life.
“You’re getting tired, aren’t you?” Her voice wasn’t exactly sympathetic, more matter-of-fact. “Well, it’s late. You’ll have to get used to the hours here.” She hesitated. “Are you going to take this office?”
Daniel could imagine her trying to get rid of all the bakelite figurines and kewpie dolls she had stashed in here. “Nah, you’re already settled in. Maybe we could share?”
“I guess.” She sounded dubious, but Daniel was hoping that, eventually, he’d be doing less paperwork, more schmoozing with the customers out front. So she might as well keep it.
“Anything else I ought to know before we stop for the night?”
He said it as a joke, no more, but Betty hesitated, clearly wanting to speak but unsure. “Well. There is one thing.”
“Yeah? What?”
Betty leaned forward over the desk. “You realize this isn’t going to last much longer, right?”
“What? Our - tutoring session, whatever this is?”
“I mean, the bootlegging business. Your father’s whole empire. I think you’ve got another three years, tops.”
Daniel stared at her. “You think Al Capone’s going to take us down?”
“I think he’s going to try, but that’s not what I mean. Daniel, bootlegging only works when alcohol sales are illegal. And I don’t think they’re going to be illegal much longer.” She fished through the piles of paperwork on her desk to pull out a Tribune, which featured a photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt; his memory managed to retrieve the information that Roosevelt was the governor of New York. “More prominent politicians are speaking out about repealing Prohibition. Roosevelt’s one of them, and he’s likely to be the Democratic candidate in 1932. If he wins, alcohol will be made legal again, and then where are we?”
The Democratic platform in 1932 was going to be VOTE FOR US AND YOU CAN HAVE A DRINK. That was pretty much unstoppable.
Daniel, who had been hardly more than a child when alcohol was outlawed, tried to envision a world where drinks were freely sold, and bars were ordinary businesses. No policemen to bribe, no politicians to buy: Just a business like any other. Mode and his father’s other speakeasies would quickly have tons of competition. More than that, the profits they gained from supplying alcohol to other vendors would vanish as they were replaced by cheaper legal competition.
He hadn’t been able to envision running a criminal enterprise, but less still could he envision being poor. “Uh-oh.”
“It doesn’t have to be a disaster. Not if we start thinking ahead now,” Betty said earnestly. “What if your father started investing in legitimate businesses? Restaurants, maybe - nice places. You know, ritzy. Then when alcohol’s legal again, he can start serving champagne and wine there right away.”
“You mean - you think we ought to go straight.” A blaze of hope lit in Daniel’s chest. If his family went straight, he wouldn’t have to become a criminal. He wouldn’t have to worry about getting shot. He wouldn’t need to think about shooting anyone else. All of this sounded good.
Slowly, she smiled at him. “You want to, don’t you?”
Daniel simply nodded, and he had the distinct sense that he’d just passed a test without knowing it had been set. Funny, how Betty Suarez’s good opinion already meant something to him. He said, “Let’s talk it over some other night, okay?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. That’s a big day for us.”
“Then I’ll be here.” So much for catching that showing of “Queen Kelly” he’d been looking forward to. Maybe he could see a matinee.
In the club outside, applause began, so thunderous that Daniel realized Minnie’s final set must have ended. “It’s all about the clean-up, now.”
“Now we have to clean up?”
She burst out laughing. “You’ve never held a mop in your life, have you?”
“I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
“You don’t have to mop. You’re the boss. Bosses don’t mop.”
Some night, Daniel decided, he’d learn to mop and surprise her. But not tonight. He was exhausted - half from the studying they’d done back here, half from the tension he’d felt during the drive here, when he kept envisioning different ways other mobsters might try to kill him. It wasn’t restful.
They walked out into the club as the crowd was breaking up. There seemed to be quite a line at the coat-check, and many women saying things like, “My coat is raccoon, not fox!” Apparently the coat-check girl was better at flirting than at checking coats. Marc was already wiping down the bar, and in a far corner of the room, Connor was deep in conversation with Minnie.
Justin came toward them, Daniel’s coat in his hands. “I rescued this ahead of time,” he said. “Seemed like a good idea. Amanda probably would’ve given it away.”
“Thanks, Justin.” The kid really did know how to handle this place. As Daniel slid into his coat, he looked over at Betty and said, “And thank you for talking me through everything tonight.”
“It was nothing.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before adding, “Thanks for not being - I mean, for being something besides what I expected.”
“Do I want to know what you were expecting?”
“Probably not.” They shared a smile. “Good night, Daniel.”
“Good night, Betty.” Almost as an afterthought, he brushed the loose tendrils of hair away from her face before walking toward Connor and his ride home.
**
As his cream-colored Franklin drove down Clark Street toward home, Daniel amused himself by watching tough-guy Connor try hard to keep his expression from going dreamy. “Quite a lady,” Connor said, for the fourth or fifth time in the past ten minutes.
Daniel found himself remembering Betty Suarez, and how she’d stood up to him in a way nobody else would. “That she is.”
Then he recalled that he’d promised to look up Amanda the coat-check girl later that night. Funny, that he’d forget a cute girl like that. But probably she’d forgotten him just as quickly. Just as well: He really didn’t need to get involved with the staff at Mode. He needed to play things straight there. Do his best. Daniel felt like that was important, for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp but fundamentally understood.
For whatever reason, he already knew: Mode was where he wanted to be.
END
Read on if you dare!
"Happy Days Are Here Again"
In no other place in America was Prohibition more blatantly flaunted than in Chicago. In no place in Chicago could you get a harder drink, hotter jazz or a better time than you could in a speakeasy owned by gangster - ahem - “prominent businessman” Bradford Meade. And no speakeasy owned by Bradford Meade was more profitable, or dangerous, than Mode.
“Why dangerous?” said Daniel Meade, the younger son of the family. “You said we were protected on the north side.”
Bradford grimaced. “Don’t you read the papers, son?”
“I thought we bought all the papers off.”
“Only to cover what happened to your brother.” Daniel winced to think of Alex, missing and no doubt dead for almost a year now. Had he been rubbed out by Al Capone? Bugs Moran? No telling. Nobody had taken credit, and they’d never found a body. Even as the old grief welled up, though, his father was moving on. “Besides, even we don’t have enough cash to cover up the St. Valentine’s Day massacre.”
“Oh. Of course,” Daniel said. “I saw a newsreel.”
“Saw a newsreel. Thank God for your crush on Gloria Swanson; otherwise you wouldn’t have a damned clue, would you?” Bradford glared at him over his glass of gin. His father’s pinstriped three-piece suit would have looked at home on a London banker. The opulence of their mansion on Chicago’s Gold Coast would have suited the court of an Ottoman sultan. “It was your mother’s big idea to send you back east to the Ivy League. Said we needed one legitimate member of the family. It was fine with me when we had Alex. But now we need you to step up to the plate, and - you’re soft, son.”
“I’m learning. I won’t let you down, Dad. I promise.”
Did that sound as pitiful to his father as it did to him? In truth, Daniel hadn’t understood the true nature of his family’s wealth and power until very late in the game - really not until after he’d gone to college. There, it had been easy enough to pretend that he’d never have to deal with it. If he could get decent grades, he could get some worthy, respectable job that wouldn’t ask him to work too hard: a place in a large law firm that valued prestige above initiative in its young partners, or perhaps a government sinecure. Daniel never consciously thought about the “not working too hard” bit, but it figured into all his calculations.
But now Alex was gone. And Daniel - who scooped spiders up on newspaper to put them on the windowsill - was being groomed to take over a massive criminal enterprise that involved bootlegging and murder. He didn’t think it was going to go very well. Still, he had to try.
Bradford Meade pointed to the map of Chicago pinned up on the wall, which had areas marked in pencil: Moran. Capone. Meade. He pointed to one of the Moran-Meade boundary lines. “Capone’s got Bugs Moran running scared. Moran’s going to strike back at all of us, to prove he’s still powerful. And Mode’s right on the edge of his territory.”
“You think he’d hit a speakeasy?” It was one thing to attack each other’s henchmen and headquarters, another to go after civilians. Even Daniel understood that the deaths of non-criminals would ignite harsh response from the police. Sure, they’d paid off the cops - but to ignore alcohol sales, not mass slaughter of the public.
“I doubt it. That’s not what this is about. You’re my son. You’re a symbol that I’m not about to give an inch.”
Daniel also thought he was very likely to be a target, but surely his dad wouldn’t put him out there without some protections. “I’ll be, ah, covered?”
“Sure, sure,” his father said, more casually than the occasion seemed to call for. “We'll give you a bodyguard. You just go in. You’re technically not the boss, see? You’re just observing. But you find out how this business runs, starting from one speakeasy. Once you’ve got that down, you can really get started.”
“Great.” Daniel felt like he might vomit. At least, at a speakeasy, he’d be able to get a drink if he needed one. He already felt like he would need several. “Wait … what do you mean, I’m technically not the boss?”
“Technically, I don’t own any of the speakeasies. That way, if there’s ever a bust, I won’t be the one to take the fall. It’ll be one of the poor saps who signed the deed and knows he’d better turn all the profits over to me or else.”
“So who is that, at Mode?”
With an elegant shrug, Bradford said, “Some Mexican family with immigration trouble.”
**
“Relax, would you?” said his bodyguard - a tough-talking Australian named Connor Owens - as they walked along the alleyway. “I’ve got you covered.”
“I’ll feel better after we’re inside the club,” Daniel said.
“What, do you expect to stay in there for the next few years?” Connor laughed. Although it was obviously a joke, Daniel thought it didn’t sound like a bad idea. Maybe the speakeasy had room in back for a cot.
The door looked like it might lead into a back storeroom, perhaps - shabby, with strips of black paint hanging from it. Daniel rapped three times, as he’d been told, and the window in the door slid open. Dark eyes blinked up at him, and he heard the question, “Got any bananas?”
“Now you’re selling me banana oil,” Daniel answered, again, as coached.
The door swung open to reveal … a teenage kid with tan skin and doe eyes, who grinned up at them like a born showman. As the jazz music and cigarette smoke filled the space around Daniel, the kid said, “Welcome to Mode.”
He stared at the spectacle in front of them - Connor Owens clearly as blown away as Daniel himself - and said the only thing he could muster: “Wow.”
Almost two hundred people, black and white, crowded around small round tables, in air thick with the haze of cigarette smoke. Deep red paint gleamed almost wetly on the walls. A jazz band was banging out a beat so tantalizing that Daniel wished he had come to dance, and indeed several couples were going wild on the dance floor, the women’s fringe dresses flapping in rhythm. He loved it when their dresses did that. As the bass drum picked up the tempo, Daniel realized that his dad hadn’t been putting him on: This probably was the very hottest club in all of Chicago. Maybe in the whole US of A.
The teenage kid said, “Ten cents for coat check, three drink minimum. And make sure you hang out for the singer’s set. She’s fabulous.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be someplace where they’re serving alcohol?” Daniel asked.
Instead of being dismayed, the kid just shrugged. “Hello, Prohibition? We’re all illegal here. Just remember that.”
“Couldn’t forget it.” He put his hand out. “I’m Daniel Meade.”
“Oh. Oh.” That got to the kid, which should’ve been a good thing. Instead it made Daniel feel weirdly lonely, the way the boy became all serious and stopped sassing him. “Justin Suarez. My grandfather runs this place for, uh, your dad. Which you know. Because you’re here. Um - for you, coat check is free?”
“Thanks, Justin.” He gave the boy a smile he hoped was reassuring as they turned away. It had to take a lot out of a kid to work late nights in a speakeasy. As someone else shanghaied into his family’s business without much of a vote, he could sympathize.
The coat check girl leaned halfway over her counter, revealing a whole lot of cleavage and fashionably bobbed blonde hair. “Hey,” she said, one hand at her hip. “I’m Amanda, and I really want to take care of you.”
“You mean, take our coats,” Daniel said.
She grinned wider. “That too.”
Connor sighed heavily as he handed over his coat, though he kept his fedora on. Apparently he didn’t go for fast girls. Daniel, who did, smiled back as he handed his over with his hat, but he tried to keep his mind on what he was doing … at least for now. He could look up that sassy coat-check girl later.
They stepped from the foyer into the club proper. Along the left wall, Daniel saw what he’d most been seeking: the bar. For the first time, Connor’s stern face shifted into a rogueish grin. “Thank God,” he said, his Australian accent thicker than usual. “I’m sick to tears of bathtub gin.”
“You and me both.” Daniel led them to the bartender, a slim young man with curly, coiffed hair. “Two Manhattans?”
“Vermouth, vermouth, vermouth,” sighed the bartender. “Couldn’t you be a bit original? God, what I wouldn’t give for an interesting cocktail order. Crème de cassis, anyone?”
“Here’s something original for you.” Connor pointed his thumb sideways, toward Daniel. “His pop’s Bradford Meade, so how about you pour the man what he wants?”
Great - now his hired muscle was threatening the staff. That couldn’t be the best way for him to get started here, could it? Then again, it was what Dad would do.
The bartender suddenly brightened into a too-cheery smile. “Well, hello there! I’m Marc, and there’s nothing I love more than pouring Manhattans. Unless it’s being the dresser for Minnie.”
“Minnie?” Daniel tried to figure out if that was some gangster he ought to know.
Marc gave him a shocked look. “The Wilhelmina Slater, the hottest jazz chanteuse in the city of Chicago? The star that made Mode what it is today? I help pick out her dresses and jewelry, do her hair, things like that. In return she doesn’t hurt me.” He sounded thrilled just to be abused by this woman. “Her next set is just about to start!”
“Hey, Marc.” An attractive woman a few years older than Daniel came walking up, cigarette case slung around her neck to rest against her hips. This was the cigarette girl, then - one who walked around all night selling cigarettes and matches, while incidentally wearing a tight-fitting dress cut low in front and high on her fishnet-stockinged legs. Despite her petite frame and bobbed black hair, he looked like she could easily handle any guy who tried to get his hands on anything besides the cigarettes. “Can you get some more of those red matchbooks? For some crazy reason, everybody wants red tonight.”
“Sure thing, Hilda.” Marc handed her a packet of the matchbooks, pointedly looking at Daniel. “Did you meet Bradford Meade's son, by the way?”
“Oh, my God.” Hilda stared for a second before giving him a big grin, though there was nervousness behind it. Was this the way his father saw the world - forever afraid of him? Daniel didn’t know how he could stand it. “You must’ve met my Justin. He’s a good boy, don’t worry. He can handle the door.”
“Can’t believe you’re old enough to have a kid that age,” Connor said.
Clearly flattered, Hilda smoothed her hair. “Got started early.” Daniel couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Was her husband dead, or was she one of those divorcees, or - more shocking than any other possibility - had she never been married at all? He told himself to get over it; the people he met at Mode were going to be different than Chicago’s high society or the families he’d met through his friends at Harvard. Rougher. Earthier. But - it seemed to him - a lot more exciting.
Daniel had done as much tomcatting around at college as any other guy - considerably more than most, really. He’d been popular, though he’d always wondered, down deep, if that was because he could always provide bootleg booze for parties. He’d squired around Radcliffe students and even fooled around with some actresses in New York. But that was all pretty ordinary stuff, even if he indulged more frequently. Life at Mode - that could get wild.
Just as he was contemplating the hedonistic possibilities, the house lights lowered and the band began providing a drum roll. Marc clapped his hands together excitedly under his chin. “It’s time!”
The bandleader called out, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mode is proud to present the one, the only - Minnie Slater!”
Marc leaped up to hit a switch on the wall, which made an enormous spotlight illuminate the stage just as the singer stepped out. Minnie wore a white sequined gown that contrasted with her brown skin, and jewels that had to be paste but glittered like real. As the applause began to fade, she started singing in a perfect, honeyed voice:
“So long, sad times
Go along, bad times!
We are rid of you at last -
Howdy, gay times
Cloudy gray times
You’re now a thing of the past - because - ”
Daniel knew the song, of course. Everybody in the United States knew that song by now. But Minnie didn’t sing it all happy and chirpy the way most jazz bands played it. Instead, it was slow and sweet - almost sad - like those bad times weren’t quite over yet. That made the song more beautiful in the strangest way, Daniel thought, as she swept into the chorus:
“Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Let’s sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again - ”
He turned to Connor to say, She’s really something, huh? but the words never left Daniel’s mouth. Because Connor wasn’t just listening to Minnie - he was staring, slack-jawed, with an expression that was equal parts desire and wonder. For the first time, Daniel thought, he really understood what the word “lovestruck” really meant.
Hopefully it wouldn’t distract Connor from his bodyguard duties. Daniel liked the part where somebody was interested in keeping him alive.
Then, at his shoulder, Daniel heard a woman’s voice say, “So, you’re Daniel Meade?”
He turned his head to the side. He saw nothing. And then he looked down.
She wore a dowdy mustard-colored suit that looked more like something from 1919 than 1929, and her hair pulled back into a schoolmarm bun. Those round spectacles weren’t doing her any favors, either - but the frown on her face capped things off.
“Yeah, I’m Daniel,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Betty Suarez. I run this place for my father, since he got sick.” She put her hands on her hips. “And you’re got a lot of nerve showing up here.”
“Betty!” Hilda whispered, waving her hands. “This guy is our boss! You gotta be polite! At least to his face.” Marc clutched a seltzer bottle to his chest, like he was considering spraying Betty down to cool her off.
Connor glared at them all. “Can’t you be quiet while the lady’s trying to sing?”
Daniel took Betty by the elbow and guided her away from the bar deeper into the club - then realized he wasn’t really sure where else to go. Betty made a harrumphing sound as she took over the steering, half pushing him into a back room. As soon as the door shut behind them, she said, “How can you come down on us like this?”
“I’m not coming down -”
“I expected that we’d hear about it. That not all the reaction would be positive.” She pushed her glasses further up her nose as her words peppered him like bullets from a tommy gun. “But having you show up here to take control of the nightclub just because I decided we should integrate it is really ridiculous. Social justice -”
“Wait, wait. Give me a second, all right?” Daniel tried to process what she’d just said. “It’s fine that you integrated the club.”
Betty blinked, owlish behind those funny glasses. “It is?”
“Yeah.” Daniel had never considered himself a radical in this area, nor any other, as being a radical seemed to involve a lot of reading. But to him this seemed like nothing more than simple good sense. “I mean, these days, we could all use a drink, right?”
“Right. Exactly. Thank you.” Betty studied him, more curious than hostile now. “So, if your father isn’t angry about my integrating the club, why did he send you here? What did I do wrong?”
Daniel sighed. “You’ve got it upside down. I’m the one who’s wrong - the one who doesn’t know anything about, uh, the family business, let’s call it. He thinks I could learn a lot here - from you, I guess. So you’re doing everything right.”
Another aspect of his father’s decision process had already occurred to Daniel, but he wasn’t about to mention it. Dad liked to scold him for spending too much time and attention on his ladyfriends - romance was, to Bradford Meade, nothing but a distraction. Betty Suarez didn’t look very distracting. Cute in a sort of enraged-owl way, but not Daniel’s type by a long shot. His father must have assumed that, here at Mode, he’d be able to focus.
“I’m supposed to be teaching you how to run a speakeasy?” Betty folded her arms. “So now I have two jobs.”
She didn’t show much deference to someone who was supposed to be her boss - but Daniel realized he kind of liked that. After watching Connor intimidate Marc and Hilda, and seeing how Justin’s smile had changed from something natural to something fake upon hearing Daniel’s name, he found it refreshing to talk to someone who wasn’t going to cut him much slack or put him down. “Look at it this way. You’re making sure a thirsty nation stays … lubricated.”
Her mouth quirked in an unwilling smile, and for the first time, he noticed that she had very full lips. “Well, we might as well get started.”
**
More than two hours later, they sat in the back office, which smelled comfortably musty and was filled with little goofy knick-knacks that Betty apparently thought were cute. Daniel had rolled up his shirt sleeves, and Betty had set aside her jacket. A few tendrils of hair had escaped from her bun. “So, ‘nuts’ is our code word for hard liquor, and ‘bolts’ is the code for wine and beer. We use ‘hard bolts’ for wine, ‘rounded bolts’ for beer, but there's not much need to split them up, because we have the same suppliers.”
“Won’t the tax guys notice that we don’t bring in the same number of nuts and bolts? You know, they usually go together.”
“Usually we bribe the tax guys. We’re not going for accuracy here. Just something plausible. Something they could say they believed, if someone else asked.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes with one hand; the little numbers in the narrow columns were starting to swim before his eyes. In the distant background, he could hear Minnie Slater’s latest set and the raucous approval of the crowd. Quite a party was going on just feet away, but he’d never been farther from it.
He glanced at Betty and wondered if she’d ever gotten to hear a whole show. Or to drink a glass of the champagne. Whether any guy had ever asked her to dance. She seemed like she could use a little dancing in her life.
“You’re getting tired, aren’t you?” Her voice wasn’t exactly sympathetic, more matter-of-fact. “Well, it’s late. You’ll have to get used to the hours here.” She hesitated. “Are you going to take this office?”
Daniel could imagine her trying to get rid of all the bakelite figurines and kewpie dolls she had stashed in here. “Nah, you’re already settled in. Maybe we could share?”
“I guess.” She sounded dubious, but Daniel was hoping that, eventually, he’d be doing less paperwork, more schmoozing with the customers out front. So she might as well keep it.
“Anything else I ought to know before we stop for the night?”
He said it as a joke, no more, but Betty hesitated, clearly wanting to speak but unsure. “Well. There is one thing.”
“Yeah? What?”
Betty leaned forward over the desk. “You realize this isn’t going to last much longer, right?”
“What? Our - tutoring session, whatever this is?”
“I mean, the bootlegging business. Your father’s whole empire. I think you’ve got another three years, tops.”
Daniel stared at her. “You think Al Capone’s going to take us down?”
“I think he’s going to try, but that’s not what I mean. Daniel, bootlegging only works when alcohol sales are illegal. And I don’t think they’re going to be illegal much longer.” She fished through the piles of paperwork on her desk to pull out a Tribune, which featured a photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt; his memory managed to retrieve the information that Roosevelt was the governor of New York. “More prominent politicians are speaking out about repealing Prohibition. Roosevelt’s one of them, and he’s likely to be the Democratic candidate in 1932. If he wins, alcohol will be made legal again, and then where are we?”
The Democratic platform in 1932 was going to be VOTE FOR US AND YOU CAN HAVE A DRINK. That was pretty much unstoppable.
Daniel, who had been hardly more than a child when alcohol was outlawed, tried to envision a world where drinks were freely sold, and bars were ordinary businesses. No policemen to bribe, no politicians to buy: Just a business like any other. Mode and his father’s other speakeasies would quickly have tons of competition. More than that, the profits they gained from supplying alcohol to other vendors would vanish as they were replaced by cheaper legal competition.
He hadn’t been able to envision running a criminal enterprise, but less still could he envision being poor. “Uh-oh.”
“It doesn’t have to be a disaster. Not if we start thinking ahead now,” Betty said earnestly. “What if your father started investing in legitimate businesses? Restaurants, maybe - nice places. You know, ritzy. Then when alcohol’s legal again, he can start serving champagne and wine there right away.”
“You mean - you think we ought to go straight.” A blaze of hope lit in Daniel’s chest. If his family went straight, he wouldn’t have to become a criminal. He wouldn’t have to worry about getting shot. He wouldn’t need to think about shooting anyone else. All of this sounded good.
Slowly, she smiled at him. “You want to, don’t you?”
Daniel simply nodded, and he had the distinct sense that he’d just passed a test without knowing it had been set. Funny, how Betty Suarez’s good opinion already meant something to him. He said, “Let’s talk it over some other night, okay?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. That’s a big day for us.”
“Then I’ll be here.” So much for catching that showing of “Queen Kelly” he’d been looking forward to. Maybe he could see a matinee.
In the club outside, applause began, so thunderous that Daniel realized Minnie’s final set must have ended. “It’s all about the clean-up, now.”
“Now we have to clean up?”
She burst out laughing. “You’ve never held a mop in your life, have you?”
“I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
“You don’t have to mop. You’re the boss. Bosses don’t mop.”
Some night, Daniel decided, he’d learn to mop and surprise her. But not tonight. He was exhausted - half from the studying they’d done back here, half from the tension he’d felt during the drive here, when he kept envisioning different ways other mobsters might try to kill him. It wasn’t restful.
They walked out into the club as the crowd was breaking up. There seemed to be quite a line at the coat-check, and many women saying things like, “My coat is raccoon, not fox!” Apparently the coat-check girl was better at flirting than at checking coats. Marc was already wiping down the bar, and in a far corner of the room, Connor was deep in conversation with Minnie.
Justin came toward them, Daniel’s coat in his hands. “I rescued this ahead of time,” he said. “Seemed like a good idea. Amanda probably would’ve given it away.”
“Thanks, Justin.” The kid really did know how to handle this place. As Daniel slid into his coat, he looked over at Betty and said, “And thank you for talking me through everything tonight.”
“It was nothing.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before adding, “Thanks for not being - I mean, for being something besides what I expected.”
“Do I want to know what you were expecting?”
“Probably not.” They shared a smile. “Good night, Daniel.”
“Good night, Betty.” Almost as an afterthought, he brushed the loose tendrils of hair away from her face before walking toward Connor and his ride home.
**
As his cream-colored Franklin drove down Clark Street toward home, Daniel amused himself by watching tough-guy Connor try hard to keep his expression from going dreamy. “Quite a lady,” Connor said, for the fourth or fifth time in the past ten minutes.
Daniel found himself remembering Betty Suarez, and how she’d stood up to him in a way nobody else would. “That she is.”
Then he recalled that he’d promised to look up Amanda the coat-check girl later that night. Funny, that he’d forget a cute girl like that. But probably she’d forgotten him just as quickly. Just as well: He really didn’t need to get involved with the staff at Mode. He needed to play things straight there. Do his best. Daniel felt like that was important, for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp but fundamentally understood.
For whatever reason, he already knew: Mode was where he wanted to be.
END